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Module on Marxist and Socialist Feminism

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Module on Marxist and Socialist Feminism Details Role Name Affiliation Principal Investigator Sujata Patel Professor Department of Sociology University of Hyderabad Paper Coordinator Anurekha Chari Assistant Professor Wagh Department of Sociology Centre for Advanced Studies Savitribai Phule Pune University Content Writer/Author Sudeshna Mukherjee Assistant Professor (CW) Centre for Women‘s Studies Bangalore University Content Reviewer (CR) Anurekha Chari Assistant Professor Wagh Department of Sociology Centre for Advanced Studies SavitribaiPhule Pune University Language Editor (LE) Anurekha Chari Assistant Professor Wagh Department of Sociology Centre for Advanced Studies SavitribaiPhule Pune University Module Structure: 1. Introduction , 2. Basic tenets of Marxism and subordination of gender perspective under class perspective, 3. Engel‘s on a) Productive and reproductive labor and b) The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State 4. From Marxism to Marxist Feminism : ( Thinkers: Margaret Benston , Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James) 5. Issues: Socialization of Domestic work Wages for House work Theory of comparable worth 6. From Marxist Feminism to Socialist Feminism 7. Emergence of Socialist Feminism: A synthesis of Marxist Feminism, Radical Feminism and Psychoanalytic Feminism 8. Socialist Feminism on Patriarchy and Capitalism 9. Dual System Theory(Juliett Mitchell , Heidi Hartmann) 10. Unified System Theory(Irish Young , Alison Jagger ) 11. Contemporary Socialist Feminism 12. Critiques of Marxist and Socialist Feminism 13. Socialist feminism in Indian Context (B) Description of Module Items Description of Module Subject Name Sociology Paper Name Sociology of Gender Module Name/ Title Marxist and Socialist Feminism Module ID Pre-requisites Objectives The basic postulates of the Marxian model of class oppression based on economic determinism. Gender blind nature of ‗oppression‘ under Marxism and necessary push initiated by 2 Marxist feminists to address gender based oppression along with class oppression. Inadequacies in Marxism and emergence of socialist feminism combining Marxist, Radical and Psychoanalytic Feminisms. Socialist feminism‘s emphasis on both patriarchy and capitalism in explaining women‘s subordination. Keywords Alienation, Capitalism, Marxism, class and class struggle, Dual System Theory, Unified System Theory, Marxist feminism, mode of production, patriarchy, Private Property, Productive Labor, Reproductive labor, sexual division of labor, Socialist Feminism , Socialization of domestic work, Wages for House Work, Comparative Worth, women‘s oppression 3 Marxist and socialist Feminism Module Introduction: Interdisciplinary and intersectionalilty have been influencing feminist theorizing since inception. Feminist theorizing has been reshaped by multiple mainstream theoretical perspectives in its understanding of women‘s oppression. Inability of the liberal welfarism and radical patriarchal feminist agendas of women‘s liberation, paved the ways for Marxist and socialist feminism. Marxist and socialist feminists‘ claim that it is impossible for women, to achieve true freedom in a class-based capitalist society where the powerless many, that produce the wealth, are deprived of it. Private ownership of the means of production by relatively few persons, originally all male, inaugurated a class system whose contemporary manifestations are corporate capitalism and imperialism. Reflection on this state of affairs suggests that capitalism itself, not just the larger social rules that privilege men over women, is the cause of women‘s oppression. Women‘s true liberation demands, the capitalist system must be replaced by a socialist system in which the means of production belong to everyone. No longer economically dependent on men, women will be just as free as men. Basic tenets of Marxism: subordination of gender perspective under class perspective: Marxism, based on influential works by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (1848) in ‗The Communist Manifesto’ ,Marx (1859) in ‗A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’ and Engels‘ ‗The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State’ , regard classism rather than sexism as the fundamental cause of women‘s oppression. For the Marxist, material forces— the production and reproduction of social life—are the prime movers in history. In other words, Marx believed a society‘s total mode of production—that is, its forces of production (the raw materials, tools, and workers that actually produce goods) plus its relations of production (the ways in which production is organized)— generates a superstructure (a layer of legal, political, and social ideas) that in turn reinforces the mode of production (Tong,2009). 4 Marx and Engels focused on class struggle as the driving forces of history; they paid scant attention to ―sex class.‖ Shulamith Firestone, a radical feminist, following Marxian dialectics claimed that the material basis for the sexual/political ideology of female submission and male domination was rooted in the reproductive roles of men and women. She proposed to make up for this by developing a feminist version of historical materialism in which sex class, rather than economic class, is the central concept. Firestone said it would take a major biological and social revolution to effect this kind of human liberation. “Historical Materialism is that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and great moving power of all historical events in the economic development of society, in the changes of the modes of production and exchange, in the consequent division of society into distinct classes, and in the struggles of these classes against one another.” Friedrich Engels (Socialism: Utopian or Scientific, quoted in Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex, pp. 1–12). Historical materialism is that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all historical events in the dialectic of sex: the division of society into two distinct biological classes for procreative reproduction, and the struggles of these classes with one another; in the changes in the modes of marriage, reproduction and child care created by these struggles; in the connected development of other physically-differentiated classes (castes); and in the first division of labor based on sex which developed into the (economic-cultural) class system. Shulamith Firestone, (Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex, p. 12). Accordin g to Marxist feminists, women's liberation can only be achieved through a radical restructuring of the current capitalist economy, in which much of women's labor is uncompensated and invisible. In the capitalist system, two types of labor exist. Followed by Engels, Marxist feminists like Margaret Benston and Peggy Morton stressed on: Productive Labor: in which the labor results in goods or services that have monetary value in the capitalist system and are thus compensated by the producers in the form of a paid wage. Reproductive labor: which is associated with the private sphere and involves anything that people have to do for themselves that is not for the purposes of receiving a wage (i.e. cleaning, cooking, having children). Engels- The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State: Although the fathers of Marxism did not take women‘s oppression as seriously as they did workers‘ oppression, but Engels did offer explanations for women‘s oppression. Engels in ―The 5 Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State‖ (1845), showed how changes in the material conditions of people affect the organization of their family relations. Engels speculated that primitive hunting gathering; promiscuous societies may have been not merely matrilineal but also matriarchal societies in which women ruled at the political, social, and economic levels (Tong, 2009). Only when the site of production changed, women lost their advantaged position. Engels said a site change did occur with the advent of agriculture, domestication of animals and the breeding of herds. Somehow, the male-female power balance shifted in favor of men, as men learned to produce more than enough animals to meet the tribe‘s needs for milk and meat. As men‘s work and production grew in importance, the value of women‘s work, production and status of women decreased. With new found social status, suddenly men wanted their own biological children (by imposing control on pre-existing free female sexuality) to get their possessions and exerted enormous pressure to convert society from a matrilineal one into a patrilineal one. Engels presented the ―overthrow of mother right‖ as ―the world-historic defeat of the female sex‖ (Engels, 1845: 118– 119).In this new familial order, said Engels, the husband ruled by virtue of his economic power: ―He is the bourgeois and the wife represents the proletariat‖ (Engels, 1845: 118–119) Engels believed men‘s power over women is rooted in the men‘s control over private property. He believed the oppression of women will cease only with the dissolution of the institution of private property. From Marxism to Marxist Feminism: Classical Marxist feminists work within the conceptual terrain laid out by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other nineteenth-century thinkers. During the Communist Revolution of 1917 in Russia, women were invited to enter the productive workforce with expectation that economic independence would increase the possibility of women‘s developing self-confidence and viewing themselves as makers of meaningful human history (Tong, 2009). But it was
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